TL;DR version: Diablo 3 will use two auction houses; one that works on in-game currency (gold), and one that uses real-world currency ($, 원, 円, £, €, perhaps even §). Pay a nominal fee to list a virtual item, earn real world cash if it sells.

Now, I have to admit that this seems like a natural progression of legitimate business models for online games, it’s microtransactions in the direct hands of the players and balanced by their economy. Not much different from buying individual CCG cards, really. Also, this is basically what 3rd parties have been doing for years (ni hao!) in the back alleys of the internet.

I’m incredibly interested to see how this dynamic works in practice. I fully expect to hear about people making hundreds of dollars this way. Real, honest-to-god Benjamins. Alternatively, the cash can be dumped into your Battle.net account, where you can burn it on whatever they sell. Game time, plushies, a miniature Ragnaros, that expensive mouse that doesn’t quite justify its price tag.

Not to mention the impact this might have on those 3rd party gold sellers everyone loves to hate. Is there a place for them in this model? Will their casual disregard for and sometimes disastrous impact on virtual economies bleed into real economies, however minutely?

I must also admit that the whole idea terrifies me. Considering how horrible the internet community is, in general, at keeping their personal information safe — account hacking in WoW is still a constant problem — I’ll be eternally waiting for the sky to fall. Instead of stealing pixels that can be painstakingly turned into real money through a good fence and a black market, hackers will be much closer to stealing real money. Is Blizzard is willing to ford a river boiling with litigation and insurance concerns? Guess so. If anyone could make it work, it’s them.

And I suppose it answers for me why the game will require an always-on internet connection and won’t support any mods of any kind. Hmph.